Oh Yeah! Cartoons (partially lost Nickelodeon series; 1998-2001)

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The show's logo.

Status: Partially Lost

Oh Yeah! Cartoons was an American animation showcase that aired on the Nickelodeon cable channel. Oh Yeah! was guided by Fred Seibert, former Creative Director of MTV Networks and President of Hanna-Barbera and produced by Frederator Studios. It ran as part of Nickelodeon's Nicktoons lineup, and in its second season, was hosted by Kenan Thompson of All That and Kenan & Kel fame; then later by Josh Server for its third season. Bill Burnett composed the show's theme music. Oh Yeah! Cartoons was distributed by Nelvana outside of the United States.

In terms of sheer volume, Oh Yeah! Cartoons remains TV's biggest animation development program ever. Giving several dozen filmmakers the opportunity to create nearly 100 seven-minute cartoons, the series eventually yielded three dedicated half-hour spin-offs and two co-series made by Billionfold Inc. for Nickelodeon including The Fairly OddParents, ChalkZone and My Life as a Teenage Robot.

Contents

Production

Nickelodeon's Oh Yeah! half-hour featured in its first season, a total of 39 brand new seven-minute cartoons in 13 episodes, surpassing the number of new cartoons and characters on any other single network. In its full run, Oh Yeah! Cartoons featured and produced over 99 cartoons and 54 characters.

Many of the animated shorts were created by cartoonists who later became more prominent, including Bob Boyle, Thomas R. Fitzgerald, Bill Burnett, Jaime Diaz, John Eng, John Fountain, Butch Hartman, Larry Huber, Zac Moncrief, Ken Kessel, Alex Kirwan, Seth MacFarlane, Carlos Ramos, Rob Renzetti, Byron Vaughns, Pat Ventura, and Vincent Waller. Many of the animators featured on Oh Yeah! Cartoons had worked on the What A Cartoon! Show produced by Hanna-Barbera and Cartoon Network two years earlier. The show was also created by Fred Seibert while he was president of Hanna-Barbera and had the same concept as Oh Yeah! Cartoons. When Seibert left Hanna-Barbera in 1997 and founded Frederator Studios, many of the animators that had worked on What A Cartoon! migrated with him to produce shorts for Oh Yeah! Cartoons.

Availability

Even though only specific WAC shorts were released on VHS tapes during the 90's, and these shorts have not been seen on television since limited airings on Boomerang in 2007, every WAC short can be watched on various online sites (partially due to these limited Boomerang airings, and the fact that several people recorded episodes and decided to upload them to YouTube). However, there are some original forms of a very few WAC shorts that remain missing, which are detailed on the Lost Media Wiki page on The What A Cartoon! Show.

Oh Yeah! Cartoons has several shorts that are missing from the Internet, save for some non-informative postcards on the shorts. This series mainly aired all of its episodes after The What A Cartoon! Show ended, and this series also last aired on public television in 2007. It may be assumed that the shorts would be readily available only, however, for some strange reason, very few people seem to have recorded the series, despite it airing for several years in reruns. It is extremely rare to see an Oh Yeah! short with a Nickelodeon or Nicktoons watermark in the corner of the short online.

However, unlike WAC, Nickelodeon and Frederator did not halt OYC distribution when it was taken off of the air in 2007. Because Nickelodeon still maintains the rights to all content that was broadcast on the show, unlike KaBlam!, Nickelodeon has uploaded a wide collection of OYC episodes, including the very rare in-between segments with Kenan Thompson and Josh Server, onto such as Amazon and iTunes. This collection has helped the online community find most of the OYC shorts. Most of the OYC shorts that have a presence online have been recorded from this collection of episodes that do not have any watermarks on them.

Frederator also has not forgotten about OYC, as they used to release specific shorts of OYC submitted to them by the short creators of their old Channel Frederator videos. Specific Channel Frederator episodes have been archived and can be watched for free on Veoh.

However, the two situations above only include a majority of the OYC shorts, and not all of them. The shorts that were not released on pay-to-watch sites/Channel Frederator are impossible to find online. The only way to find the "missing shorts" as listed below would be if someone recorded the shorts when OYC was still airing on Nickelodeon and Nicktoons. But, as said earlier, it seems that few people recorded OYC off of their TV sets. This presents a problem that these "missing shorts" may be harder to come by than it may be assumed.

The list below includes found shorts as of 2016. This means that the shorts that have been found this year and will be on this list.

As of December 2016, most of the shorts have been found and can be viewed here.